Radiohead return to Curfew's cover, and defend signing to EMI

Radiohead are on the cover of Curfew, Oxford's free music monthly, for the second time; the first was in December 1991, when they were still On a Friday. The band say they have had only one bad review, in NME's last issue of 1992, which called them a feeble rock group. It cut deep, Thom Yorke says, and he went out, bought a large box of plasters and stuck them all over his flat.

“Anyone Can Play Guitar”, Melody Maker's lead pick on its singles page, is out on 1 February, with “Coke Babies” and “Faithless, the Wonder Boy” on the B-side, both written on tour. Pablo Honey follows on 22 February, two days after the band play the Venue in Oxford, which Curfew expects to sell out. The next tour opens in Dudley, and they go to America in April.

Signing to EMI through Parlophone drew objections, and an NME journalist told them “Creep” would have sold far more on an independent label. The band's answer is that they are not an independent act. They write pop songs, they say, and their only friction with EMI has been over radio play. “Creep” sold 12,000 copies by their count and came fourth in NME's writers' singles of 1992, though Radio 1's producers thought it too miserable to play and Drill had more airplay.

They played more than 100 gigs in 1992, mostly as a support act. The best tour was with The Frank and Walters. The worst was with Kingmaker, where they never got a soundcheck, which the band put down to the headliners' production.